| 1. |
- de Jong, R. S., et al.
(författare)
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4MOST : Project overview and information for the First Call for Proposals
- 2019
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Ingår i: The Messenger. - : European Southern Observatory. - 0722-6691. ; 175, s. 3-11
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Tidskriftsartikel (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We introduce the 4-metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope (4MOST), a new high-multiplex, wide-field spectroscopic survey facility under development for the four-metre-class Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) at Paranal. Its key specifications are: a large field of view (FoV) of 4.2 square degrees and a high multiplex capability, with 1624 fibres feeding two low-resolution spectrographs (R = λ/Δλ ~ 6500), and 812 fibres transferring light to the high-resolution spectrograph (R ~ 20 000). After a description of the instrument and its expected performance, a short overview is given of its operational scheme and planned 4MOST Consortium science; these aspects are covered in more detail in other articles in this edition of The Messenger. Finally, the processes, schedules, and policies concerning the selection of ESO Community Surveys are presented, commencing with a singular opportunity to submit Letters of Intent for Public Surveys during the first five years of 4MOST operations.
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| 2. |
- Buder, S., et al.
(författare)
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The GALAH survey : An abundance, age, and kinematic inventory of the solar neighbourhood made with TGAS
- 2019
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Ingår i: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - : EDP SCIENCES S A. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 624
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The overlap between the spectroscopic Galactic Archaeology with HERMES (GALAH) survey and Gaia provides a high-dimensional chemodynamical space of unprecedented size. We present a first analysis of a subset of this overlap, of 7066 dwarf, turn-off, and subgiant stars. These stars have spectra from the GALAH survey and high parallax precision from the Gaia DR1 Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution. We investigate correlations between chemical compositions, ages, and kinematics for this sample. Stellar parameters and elemental abundances are derived from the GALAH spectra with the spectral synthesis code SPECTROSCOPY MADE EASY. We determine kinematics and dynamics, including action angles, from the Gaia astrometry and GALAH radial velocities. Stellar masses and ages are determined with Bayesian isochrone matching, using our derived stellar parameters and absolute magnitudes. We report measurements of Li, C, O, Na, Mg, Al, Si, K, Ca, Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Y, as well as Ba and we note that we have employed non-LTE calculations for Li, O, Al, and Fe. We show that the use of astrometric and photometric data improves the accuracy of the derived spectroscopic parameters, especially log g. Focusing our investigation on the correlations between stellar age, iron abundance [Fe/H], and mean alpha-enhancement [alpha/Fe] of the magnitude-selected sample, we recover the result that stars of the high-a sequence are typically older than stars in the low-a sequence, the latter spanning iron abundances of -0.7 < [Fe/H] < +0.5. While these two sequences become indistinguishable in [alpha/Fe] vs. [Fe/H] at the metal-rich regime, we find that age can be used to separate stars from the extended high-a and the low-a sequence even in this regime. When dissecting the sample by stellar age, we find that the old stars (>8 Gyr) have lower angular momenta L-z than the Sun, which implies that they are on eccentric orbits and originate from the inner disc. Contrary to some previous smaller scale studies we find a continuous evolution in the high-alpha-sequence up to super-solar [Fe/H] rather than a gap, which has been interpreted as a separate "high-alpha metal-rich" population. Stars in our sample that are younger than 10 Gyr, are mainly found on the low alpha-sequence and show a gradient in L-z from low [Fe/H] > (L-z > L-z,L-circle dot) towards higher [Fe/H] (L-z < L-z,L-circle dot), which implies that the stars at the ends of this sequence are likely not originating from the close solar vicinity.
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| 3. |
- Martell, S., et al.
(författare)
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The GALAH survey : Scientific motivation
- 2015
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Ingår i: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 449:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Galactic Archaeology with HERMES (GALAH) survey is a large high-resolution spectroscopic survey using the newly commissioned High Efficiency and Resolution Multi-Element Spectrograph (HERMES) on the Anglo-Australian Telescope. The HERMES spectrograph provides high-resolution (R ~ 28 000) spectra in four passbands for 392 stars simultaneously over a 2 deg field of view. The goal of the survey is to unravel the formation and evolutionary history of the Milky Way, using fossil remnants of ancient star formation events which have been disrupted and are now dispersed throughout the Galaxy. Chemical tagging seeks to identify such dispersed remnants solely from their common and unique chemical signatures; these groups are unidentifiable from their spatial, photometric or kinematic properties. To carry out chemical tagging, the GALAH survey will acquire spectra for a million stars down to V ~ 14. The HERMES spectra of FGK stars contain absorption lines from 29 elements including light proton-capture elements, α-elements, odd-Z elements, iron-peak elements and n-capture elements from the light and heavy s-process and the r-process. This paper describes the motivation and planned execution of the GALAH survey, and presents some results on the first-light performance of HERMES.
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| 4. |
- Spina, L., et al.
(författare)
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The GALAH survey : tracing the Galactic disc with open clusters
- 2021
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Ingår i: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 503:3, s. 3279-3296
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Open clusters are unique tracers of the history of our own Galaxy's disc. According to our membership analysis based on Gala astrometry, out of the 226 potential clusters falling in the footprint of the GALactic Archaeology with HERMES (GALAH) survey or the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) survey, we find that 205 have secure members that were observed by at least one of the surveys. Furthermore, members of 134 clusters have high-quality spectroscopic data that we use to determine their chemical composition. We leverage this information to study the chemical distribution throughout the Galactic disc of 21 elements, from C to Eu. The radial metallicity gradient obtained from our analysis is -0.076 +/- 0.009 dex kpc(-1), which is in agreement with previous works based on smaller samples. Furthermore, the gradient in the (Fe/Hi-guiding radius (r(guid)) plane is -0.073 +/- 0.008 dex kpc(-1). We show consistently that open clusters trace the distribution of chemical elements throughout the Galactic disc differently than field stars. In particular, at the given radius, open clusters show an age-metallicity relation that has less scatter than field stars. As such scatter is often interpreted as an effect of radial migration, we suggest that these differences are due to the physical selection effect imposed by our Galaxy: clusters that would have migrated significantly also had higher chances to get destroyed. Finally, our results reveal trends in the [X/Fe]-r(guid)-age space, which are important to understand production rates of different elements as a function of space and time.
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| 5. |
- Duong, L., et al.
(författare)
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The GALAH survey : properties of the Galactic disc(s) in the solar neighbourhood
- 2018
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Ingår i: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : OXFORD UNIV PRESS. - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 476:4, s. 5216-5232
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Using data from the GALAH pilot survey, we determine properties of the Galactic thin and thick discs near the solar neighbourhood. The data cover a small range of Galactocentric radius (7.9 less than or similar to R-GC less than or similar to 9.5 kpc), but extend up to 4 kpc in height from the Galactic plane, and several kpc in the direction of Galactic anti-rotation (at longitude 260 degrees <= l <= 280 degrees). This allows us to reliably measure the vertical density and abundance profiles of the chemically and kinematically defined 'thick' and 'thin' discs of the Galaxy. The thin disc (low-alpha population) exhibits a steep negative vertical metallicity gradient, at d[M/H]/dz = -0.18 +/- 0.01 dex kpc(-1), which is broadly consistent with previous studies. In contrast, its vertical alpha-abundance profile is almost flat, with a gradient of d[alpha/M]/dz = 0.008 +/- 0.002 dex kpc(-1). The steep vertical metallicity gradient of the low-a population is in agreement with models where radial migration has a major role in the evolution of the thin disc. The thick disc (high-alpha population) has a weaker vertical metallicity gradient d[M/H]/dz = -0.058 +/- 0.003 dex kpc(-1). The aabundance of the thick disc is nearly constant with height, d[alpha/M]/dz = 0.007 +/- 0.002 dex kpc(-1). The negative gradient in metallicity and the small gradient in [alpha/M] indicate that the high-alpha population experienced a settling phase, but also formed prior to the onset of major Type I alpha supernova enrichment. We explore the implications of the distinct alpha-enrichments and narrow [alpha/M] range of the sub-populations in the context of thick disc formation.
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| 6. |
- Martell, S. L., et al.
(författare)
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The GALAH survey : observational overview and Gaia DR1 companion
- 2017
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Ingår i: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : OXFORD UNIV PRESS. - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 465:3, s. 3203-3219
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Galactic Archaeology with HERMES (GALAH) survey is amassive observational project to trace the MilkyWay's history of star formation, chemical enrichment, stellar migration and minor mergers. Using high-resolution (R similar or equal to 28 000) spectra, taken with the High Efficiency and Resolution Multi- Element Spectrograph (HERMES) instrument at the Anglo-Australian Telescope, GALAH will determine stellar parameters and abundances of up to 29 elements for up to one million stars. Selecting targets from a colour-unbiased catalogue built from 2MASS, APASS and UCAC4 data, we expect to observe dwarfs at 0.3-3 kpc and giants at 1-10 kpc. This enables a thorough local chemical inventory of the Galactic thin and thick discs, and also captures smaller samples of the bulge and halo. In this paper, we present the plan, process and progress as of early 2016 for GALAH survey observations. In our first two years of survey observing we have accumulated the largest high-quality spectroscopic data set at this resolution, over 200 000 stars. We also present the first public GALAH data catalogue: stellar parameters (T-eff, log(g), [ Fe/ H], [ alpha/ Fe]), radial velocity, distance modulus and reddening for 10 680 observations of 9860 Tycho-2 stars, 7894 of which are included in the first Gaia data release.
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| 7. |
- Traven, G., et al.
(författare)
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The GALAH survey : multiple stars and our Galaxy: I. A comprehensive method for deriving properties of FGK binary stars?
- 2020
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Ingår i: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - : EDP Sciences. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 638
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Context. Binary stellar systems form a large fraction of the Galaxy's stars. They are useful as laboratories for studying the physical processes taking place within stars, and must be correctly taken into account when observations of stars are used to study the structure and evolution of the Galaxy. The advent of large-scale spectroscopic and photometric surveys allows us to obtain large samples of binaries that permit characterising their populations.Aims. We aim to obtain a large sample of double-lined spectroscopic binaries (SB2s) by analysis of spectra from the GALAH survey in combination with photometric and astrometric data. A combined analysis will provide stellar parameters of thousands of binary stars that can be combined to form statistical observables of a given population. We aim to produce a catalogue of well-characterised systems, which can in turn be compared to models of populations of binary stars, or to follow-up individual systems of interest.Methods. We obtained a list of candidate SB2 systems from a t-distributed stochastic neighbour embedding (t-SNE) classification and a cross-correlation analysis of GALAH spectra. To compute parameters of the primary and secondary star, we used a Bayesian approach that includes a parallax prior from Gaia DR2, spectra from GALAH, and apparent magnitudes from APASS, Gaia DR2, 2MASS, and WISE. We used a Markov chain Monte Carlo approach to sample the posterior distributions of the following model parameters for the two stars: T-eff[1,T-2], logg([1,2]), [Fe/H], V-r[1,V-2], v(mic[1,2]), v(broad[1,2]), R-[1,R-2], and E(B-V).Results. We present results for 12 760 binary stars detected as SB2s. We construct the statistical observables T-1/T-2, Delta V-r, and R-1/R-2, which demonstrate that our sample mostly consists of dwarfs, with a significant fraction of evolved stars and several dozen members of the giant branch. The majority of these binary stars is concentrated at the lower boundary of the Delta V-r distribution, and the R-1/R-2 ratio is mostly close to unity. The derived metallicity of our binary stars is statistically lower than that of single dwarf stars from the same magnitude-limited sample.Conclusions. Our sample of binary stars represents a large population of well-characterised double-lined spectroscopic binaries that are appropriate for statistical studies of the binary populations. The derived stellar properties and their distributions show trends that are expected for a population of close binary stars (a < 10 AU) detected through double lines in their spectra. Our detection technique allows us to probe binary systems with mass ratios 0.5 q <= 1.
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| 8. |
- Amarsi, Anish, et al.
(författare)
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The GALAH Survey : non-LTE departure coefficients for large spectroscopic surveys
- 2020
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Ingår i: Astronomy and Astrophysics. - : EDP Sciences. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 642
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Massive sets of stellar spectroscopic observations are rapidly becoming available and these can be used to determine the chemical composition and evolution of the Galaxy with unprecedented precision. One of the major challenges in this endeavour involves constructing realistic models of stellar spectra with which to reliably determine stellar abundances. At present, large stellar surveys commonly use simplified models that assume that the stellar atmospheres are approximately in local thermodynamic equilibrium (LTE). To test and ultimately relax this assumption, we have performed non-LTE calculations for 13 different elements (H, Li, C, N, O, Na, Mg, Al, Si, K, Ca, Mn, and Ba), using recent model atoms that have physically-motivated descriptions for the inelastic collisions with neutral hydrogen, across a grid of 3756 1D MARCS model atmospheres that spans 3000 <= T-eff/K <= 8000, - 0.5 <= log g/cm s(-2) <= 5.5, and - 5 <= [Fe/H] <= 1. We present the grids of departure coefficients that have been implemented into the GALAH DR3 analysis pipeline in order to complement the extant non-LTE grid for iron. We also present a detailed line-by-line re-analysis of 50 126 stars from GALAH DR3. We found that relaxing LTE can change the abundances by between - 0.7 dex and + 0.2 dex for different lines and stars. Taking departures from LTE into account can reduce the dispersion in the [A/Fe] versus [Fe/H] plane by up to 0.1 dex, and it can remove spurious differences between the dwarfs and giants by up to 0.2 dex. The resulting abundance slopes can thus be qualitatively different in non-LTE, possibly with important implications for the chemical evolution of our Galaxy. The grids of departure coefficients are publicly available and can be implemented into LTE pipelines to make the most of observational data sets from large spectroscopic surveys.
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| 9. |
- De Silva, G. M., et al.
(författare)
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Chemical homogeneity in collinder 261 and implications for chemical tagging
- 2007
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Ingår i: Astronomical Journal. - : American Astronomical Society. - 0004-6256 .- 1538-3881. ; 133:3, s. 1161-1175
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper presents abundances for 12 red giants of the old open cluster Collinder 261 based on spectra from the Very Large Telescope UVES. Abundances were derived for Na, Mg, Si, Ca, Mn, Fe, Ni, Zr, and Ba. We find that the cluster has a solar-level metallicity of [Fe/H] = -0.03 dex. However, most alpha- and s-process elements were found to be enhanced. The star-to-star scatter was consistent with the expected measurement uncertainty for all elements. The observed rms scatter is as follows: Na = 0.07, Mg = 0.05, Si = 0.06, Ca = 0.05, Mn = 0.03, Fe = 0.02, Ni = 0.04, Zr = 0.12, and Ba = 0.03 dex. The intrinsic scatter was estimated to be less than 0.05 dex. Such high levels of homogeneity indicate that chemical information remains preserved in this old open cluster. We use the chemical homogeneity we have now established in Cr 261, the Hyades, and the HR 1614 moving group to examine the uniqueness of the individual cluster abundance patterns, i.e., chemical signatures. We demonstrate that the three studied clusters have unique chemical signatures and discuss how other such signatures may be searched for in the future. Our findings support the prospect of chemically tagging disk stars to common formation sites in order to unravel the dissipative history of the Galactic disk.
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